


Deeper

by sophinisba



Series: Some things Freya did before she met Merlin [3]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Bloodplay, Community: kink_bingo, Cutting, Gen, Graphic Description, Grief/Mourning, Kink Bingo 2013, Knifeplay, Menstruation, Painplay, Parent Death, Puberty, Tragedy: Death of a Brother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 11:03:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1223884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophinisba/pseuds/sophinisba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before and after losing her family, Freya cuts herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deeper

**Author's Note:**

> For the "shaving/depilation" square on my 2013 kink_bingo card. Written in August 2013 and intended as part of a solo kink bingo that may or may not get finished someday.
> 
> I recommend reading "Sharper" before this (but "Surface" can be skipped).
> 
> As of posting (February 2014) this is the last piece of the series I've finished.

The knife slipped while she was shaving her pubic hair, and the cut was tiny, like a fingernail’s scratch. The blood was visible as a thin red line between the pricks of hair, but not a drop came out, and the sting was less than the cold slap of the water when she washed in the early morning.

She’d had her first monthly bleeding earlier that year, and it was no great trauma or surprise, apart from the fact that it started dark brown instead of red; thick like the mud at the bottom of the lake, not thin like water, or like the blood that used to run from her nose for no reason at all.

The pain, too, was duller than she’d expected, slow and hollow and difficult to soothe. A disappointment, really, but she could live with it, and did not complain.

Instead of shaving at the full moon, now, she would wait until the bleeding had stopped, and another few nights after that. It was easier to feel the rush then, when her body was done with slugging around in the doldrums.

+

Cutting herself with a knife, if she were to cut a little deeper, would have to hurt the normal way, wouldn’t it? With a sharp edge to it, a definite beginning, and an understanding that soon enough it would go away.

Two months later, on a morning when everything about her felt especially dull and dirty, she gave it a test with a quick shallow cut on the inside of her thigh.

And she’d been right! It hurt just where the line of blood appeared, just the way she knew it would! It hurt sharp and clear, and when she poked it with her finger it flared hotter, just like it should.

A bit of blood dripped out, and it was thin and red like normal blood. Freya tasted it and was pleased. Just because it came from that part of her body didn’t mean it would be sludgy and strange. She watched it swell and bleed for a while, pushing and pulling at the skin, and then she covered it with a cloth. How convenient that these rags were already soiled red. The cut would be out of sight as well, and no one but her would ever need to know what she’d done.

Freya realised with a start that she’d nearly forgotten about her monthly for the last few minutes. That empty ache in her belly had faded to nothing, next to the perfect little piece of pain she’d given herself. She laughed softly to think she’d discovered a remedy after all, much better than the sweet tea her mother gave her. Of course she couldn’t cut her leg every time her belly hurt. She’d run out of hidden skin quickly enough! Besides, just like with the shaving, she knew that if she did it all the time it would lose its force. Even once every month would be too much…but how lovely it was to have a brand new secret of her own, a secret weapon in reserve for times of great need.

+

People died all the time, not only when they were old. 

Usually they were grownups, but not always. When Freya’s mother was a girl there was a plague that took half her village, including her two sisters. There was another sickness last year and it was a marvel that the four of them, Freya and Tim and Harry and Mother, all survived. Harry’s own mother and father were killed by knights of Camelot when he was a baby, and that was how he came to be part of Freya’s family instead. There were tales of whole villages burned by the King’s men, and every druid boy and girl killed along with their parents, though Freya wasn’t sure she believed them.

Most of the time, just one person dies: a mother in childbirth, a man run through with a sword, a child who forgets how to swim. Then the rest of their family mourns, screaming and flailing and cursing the gods.

Freya’s mother should not have drowned in the lake, no matter how fierce the storm, because she was a grown woman who’d taught the rest of them to swim. And Freya’s brothers should not have died with her, or if they had then Freya should have drowned too.

But to leave just her to cry for the other three, that could not be. Her spirit was too small, her body too slow, and somehow she’d never learned to scream out loud.

Everyone was watching her now, and she didn’t know what to do.

She shaved the back of her head, even though it wasn’t the right time.

She cut off the rest, great handfuls of hair. Her head was still heavy, limp and useless.

Britta came and said Freya was to stay with them for a while. Freya said no thank you.

She looked at her reflection in the lake. She threw rocks at it.

Britta’s father came and tried to carry her away, but Freya lunged at him with her knife and he backed away, saying he’d come to check on her in a few days.

Then Freya sat down on her mother’s bed, and she still had the knife in her hand.

She cut her thigh first, a slow, steady slice halfway down toward her knee, crisscrossing with a few older, smaller scars. She gasped at the pain – much stronger than anything she’d caused herself before – but she had the presence of mind to draw the knife away slowly and set it on the floor. She closed her eyes and rocked back and forth and keened for a while, and then she opened her eyes and watched the blood drip down her thigh.

She was alive, she thought as the red began to spread over the white sheet. Freya’s family was dead and she was still alive. It was the most clarity she’d had since the storm.

She started another cut next to the first but didn’t go deep, and withdrew after an inch. This weapon had to be used sparingly.

People died all the time – by drowning, by fire, by disease, or for being druids. But there were songs about people who hanged themselves because they didn’t want to live anymore, and Freya had heard the story of a girl not much older than her who cut her wrists and bled to death after her lover abandoned her. She’d never believed in them before.

Mother was dead, and Tim was dead, and Harry was dead, and Freya did not want to be alive by herself but she did not want to be dead. She covered the cuts with her skirt and pressed on the wound and cried.

+

Freya woke up with a headache and pain in her leg. Someone had left her a plate of food and she ate a few bites before she was sick. Running to the doorway made the pain in her leg spike. She sat down and concentrated on the pain, because it was hers.


End file.
